To round out my “shipwrecks” POTD posts—of which this may be last, because I think I have run out of shipwrecks—I give you “The Rachel.” After Hurricane Camille in 1969, a mysterious shipwreck appeared on the Alabama coast five miles east of Fort Morgan. Reclaimed by the sea and sand, it reappeared temporarily after Hurricanes Ivan in 2004, Ike in 2008, and Tropical Storm Ida in 2009. Hurricane Isaac then exposed the wreck more than ever in 2012.[1] Apparently, tropical cyclones with “I” names have a thing for this ship.
Despite speculation that the wooden ship might be a Confederate blockade runner from the Civil War, Fort Morgan historian Mike Bailey is now certain that the wreck is the Rachel, lost to . . . you guessed it, a tropical storm in 1923.[2] Since the practice of naming storms by sequential alphabet letters had not yet begun, we don’t know if that hurricane would have had a moniker beginning with “I” (but I wouldn’t bet against it).
The Rachel has an odd backstory. A Mississippian, Captain John Riley Bless McIntosh, was never able to achieve his goal of owning a ship prior to his death. His daughter and heir, Rachel McIntosh McInnis, took her $100,000 inheritance to the De Angelo Shipyard in Moss Point, MS, to commission a ship in an attempt to fulfill her father’s dream. John De Angelo at first refused to take Rachel’s money, knowing that it was a futile investment. But with hard times for business at the end of World War I, his sons accepted the job and built a 155 foot 3-masted schooner named Rachel for Mrs. McInnis. It remained docked at her expense from its completion in 1919 until her death in 1922. After that, the De Angelo brothers claimed the ship for unpaid dock fees and sold it at auction.[3]
The Rachel’s buyer hired a crew out of Mobile to operate the schooner for hauling lumber (big business in South Mississippi at the time). The first run successfully delivered a load to Cuba, but ran into trouble—the storm, classified as a hurricane—on the return journey. The Rachel was driven aground near Fort Morgan, with no loss of life. The crew emptied the unnamed light cargo and guards were posted to protect the impossibly beached ship until an insurance settlement could be obtained. Unknown parties burned the Rachel down to near the keel after that, presumably to salvage metal parts.[4] Thereafter, the charred hulk was lost to the sand and tide, to sporadically resurface by the same forces that doomed her.
The Rachel was an odd and pleasant diversion on the Fort Morgan beach for a few years after 2012. It rests on private beach property, but was quite accessible from the beach. I have not seen the Rachel since August of 2014. A quick check of Google Earth reveals that the eroded beach has “recovered”—itself and the Rachel. So if you want to visit her, it seems you will have to wait for an I-named tropical storm to turn back the sands of time.
Thanks for looking! 
[1] Erin McLaughlin, “Mystery of Shipwreck Uncovered by Hurricane Isaac Solved,” ABC News, Sept. 5, 2012, https://abcnews.go.com/US/mystery-ship-washed-hurricane-isaac-solved/story?id=17152464#.UEel0VQZxjl; Brian Kelly, “Wreck of sailing ship reappears at Fort Morgan beach after Hurricane Isaac,” AL.com, September 05, 2012, http://blog.al.com/live/2012/09/mystery_shipwreck_at_fort_morg.html.
[2] Ibid.
[3] John Sledge, “The True Story of the ‘Rachel’,” Mobile Bay Magazine, July 25, 2016, https://mobilebaymag.com/the-true-story-of-the-rachel/.
[4] Ibid.
